The Woman in the Story Read online

  Educational Sororities

  Your heroine might go to a girls’ school. The single-sexed education system is a frequent subject of heroine’s stories in the U.K., where I’m from. Stories include The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, St. Trinian’s, An Education, and Cracks to name just a few. Why? Because girls’ schools are part of our cultural heritage. Educational Sororities expose the intensity of female relationships, and their more unpleasant side, like passive-aggressive behavior, bitchiness, and cliques. They are fascinating no-man’s worlds that have a powerful influence on young women’s developing minds.

  Enforced Sororities

  Your heroine might find herself stuck with a sorority and no way out. Just like the child widow in Water, she’s condemned to an isolated life with other Indian widows. The harem and entrapping brothel is another version of this, as in Memoirs of a Geisha. Women are bonded by sexual slavery, which can produce empathy as well as rivalry.

  Institutional Sororities

  Along with girls’ schools, convents are the most obvious form of organized sororities. The difference is that nuns have elected to be there for life. The nuns in Sister Act have to adapt to an outside element coming in, in the form of a wild, sexual, and liberated woman who shows them a new and progressive way of performing.

  Historical Sororities

  These reflect historical periods when women’s lack of power in the outside world meant that they had to spend most of their time with other women. From ladies-in-waiting to below-stairs servant girls, women have lived among each other for most of their lives.

  Real Sororities

  There are far more movies about adult sisters who live together rather than adult brothers, or adult sisters and brothers (the French film Female Agents proved a good exception to this, and is definitely worth seeing as it also shows an enforced sorority). In Her Shoes, Hilary and Jackie, Ladies in Lavender, and The Other Boleyn Girl all explore the confor your heroine is tragic when flicts and primary bond between blood sisters. The rivalry, intense envy, and overt or covert hostility between these sisters are contradicted by a sense of unconditional connection without boundaries. In Hilary and Jackie, Hilary du Pre lets her sister Jacqueline sleep with her own husband because she cannot say no to her and somehow feels responsible for her. Your heroine can’t choose a blood bond, but she can choose how she relates to her sister. In The Secret Life of Bees, the Boatwright sisters choose to be together for love, protection, and unity in a racist world.

  Tips for Writing the Nurturer Role Choice

  Male Nurturers

  You are doing your bit for the human race when you create male nurturing characters who are the true caretakers of others. Some men are just better nurturers than women, and you don’t have to make a big deal out of it in your story. As more men take on the caregiving role it will be less of an issue when a male character is the stay-at-home dad. In many close relationships, both partners share the nurturing role at different times. This kind of parental teamwork is evident in the TV show Medium and, more famously, between Miranda and Steve in Sex and the City.

  Female Bonding

  Remember women can sometimes be too nice to each other. It can be difficult to hurt your best friend. A group of women friends is nurturing because everybody’s so empathetic. Subtext in female bonding scenes can work really well to show the real dynamics between women, which they are often too afraid of communicating.

  Characterizing the Sorority

  How you characterize the sorority will help you avoid acceptable clichés. Create quirky and different characters in the group who stand out with a meaningful function to the story.

  The Nurturer Role Choice in Close-Up

  Paris je t’aime

  Ana is an illegal immigrant nanny for a rich Parisian woman. Ana has to put her baby into terrible day care for long hours to care for the other woman’s child. She then has to travel by a congested train through the suburbs of Paris to get to an upscale sixteenth arrondissement where she works. Her rich employee has absolutely no interest in finding out whether Ana has her own childcare responsibilities and tells her she’s going to be late that night. Ana thinks she has no right to ask to leave on time. When the baby she looks after starts to cry, Ana sings a song and comforts it, all the time imagining her own. As night falls, she has no way of knowing what is happening to her own child now that the nursery has closed.

  This scene shows that the way women nurture is not always a matter of choice. A poor woman might be the better mother, but she can’t bring her own child up. Wealth might mean material comfort, but it may also mean emotional deprivation. The Nanny Diaries is a comedy that explores extreme competitiveness between rich Manhattan mothers, which is even more important to them than their children’s emotional well-being.

  THE ROLE CHOICE OF DEPENDANT

  Some heroines are dependent on others, or they choose this way of being. Others are literally at the mercy of others and have no other choice. Then there are those who convince themselves that they are helpless in order to fulfill a deep psychological need to be looked after by others. “Kept woman” is still a more common platitude than “kept man,” but times are changing.

  The Dependant role choice comes from centuries of women having very little economic or political power. Up until relatively recently in the history of the world, women and children were part of a man’s property. Even the categories of Mrs., Miss, and Ms. are a hangover from times in which marital status defined a woman’s identity. The role choices of Dependant are Child, Victim, and Supportee.

  Child

  Some heroines are children, and by their very status are dependent on the care of others. Children have no power in our culture and therefore little responsibility. Maturity is all about becoming responsible for yourself and others who depend on you. Some adult heroines, however, reflect the role choice of Child because they don’t want to grow up. They might be happy with having the power, but they certainly don’t want responsibility. Scarlett O’Hara is infuriating because she will not grow up. During her story she has to face some situations in which she has to put others first, but she does it out of grim necessity, not because of any real desire or mending of her ways. Other heroine/children have too much responsibility for their young age and have their childhoods stolen from them. Although they can be old for their years, when they are adults they may have arrested development as they permanently try to recapture a lost youth. When these children become adults (or even earlier) and discover drugs, the “hit” can allow the mind a surge of release that feels too good to lose. They literally get their lost childhoods back in one hit. You can see this kind of arrested development in Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose. Edith’s childhood was deprived on every level, with a drunken mother and a cold father. The childlike part of Edith makes her impulsive, demanding, and addicted to heroin. If she nurtures anything it is her talent, but even that she abuses.

  In SherryBaby, Sherry wants to regain custody of her daughter after leaving prison, but she’s still a child herself and an addict. It’s very common for the childlike heroine to have issues with parenting. How can she be a good enough parent, when she’s still a child herself? Sherry and Edith both can’t handle the Mother role choice, and both feel guilty but find it virtually impossible to change.

  The heroine who is a child at heart does at least show the ability to receive from others. This is actually her strength — to a point. The problem arises for this kind of heroine because she likes to receive in a relationship but not do too much of the giving. If for any reason her codependent “providing” partner can’t fulfill his role, and needs her to look after him, the relationship can suddenly be at risk.

  Ms. Bright Side

  Free-spirited heroines who are always chasing rainbows can be highly charismatic, with oodles of M-Factor. Retaining a childlike ability to explore, this kind of heroine recognizes no limits and has an endless sense of wonder. If your heroine has these gifts, her freedom can be exhilarating not o
nly for her but also for the audience. Take Amelia Earhart in Amelia, Sugar in Some Like It Hot, and Samantha in Sex and the City for example, we want to have fun with these heroines and see the world through their eyes. They are often optimists, thrill seekers, and risk takers. We want them to live their dreams, not be crushed by the system.

  Victim

  If your heroine identifies with the role choice of Victim it will be because she is at the mercy of another person’s power or a social system has power over her. Alternatively, she will be identifying as a Victim to be able to manipulate another person into looking after her by “playing the victim.” Quite a range, isn’t it?

  Vulnerable Victims

  Being a vulnerable kind of Victim is not something any heroine is likely to choose for herself, but it is a kind of role choice. Why? Because nine times out of ten, the only person who can help the heroine out of this situation is herself. I’m not talking about how the countless masculine-oriented films wind up in the third act with the male hero saving a helpless and endangered woman (who is often very beautiful). These female characters only end up dependent on their saviors! The reality is that women, just like men, need to empower themselves in order to feel that they are really mistresses of their own lives, it’s that simple. In addition, not all men want the burden of responsibility. This aspect of masculinity, the expectation to be the provider, protector, and savior, feels as much as a trap to them as being protected feels for some women. It’s better to see the need to be vulnerable as a human need. We all need to feel cared for and looked after, but sometimes we convince ourselves we can’t help ourselves depending on our frame of mind or other psychological factors.

  Sexual Victims

  Precious in Precious is a Victim on almost every level of her life. She is abused by both parents, emotionally, physically, and sexually. She is African American, so she belongs to a minority group, and is female. She is obese to the point of being seriously unhealthy and is bullied in the outside world. She is barely articulate. To cap it all, she finds out she is HIV positive, thanks to repeatedly being raped by her father. In short, she is bottom of the heap and faces almost insurmountable obstacles.

  Playing the Victim

  This is a psychologically complicated role choice. In a culture that gives mixed messages about women’s power, it’s not surprising that some women use helplessness and dependency to get other people to do what they want. It’s a culture-given cop-out that is complicated by the fact that men are physically stronger than women. Part of a man’s moral development is learning responsibility for this power. Women have to come to terms with the fact that they are weaker. Other women genuinely feel they are helpless. A deep fear of failure or lack of confidence can prevent some women from actualizing their dreams. By convincing themselves that life is against them, they can avoid taking responsibility. Other victims habitually live in the blaming mode. If they make everybody else responsible for their terrible lives, then they don’t have to look within. This dynamic is pathological in some heroines who blame their husbands for everything wrong in their lives. An interesting example of a bitter “victim” is Terry Ann, the mother in The Upside of Anger who believes her husband has left her. Later Terry discovers her abandoning husband in fact died alone, accidentally. Terry’s quickness to judge, blame, and resent is her striking M-Factor that drives the film.

  Many heroines’ stories show a transformation in the main character, emerging from a victim-like status to taking responsibility for her own life, such as Jenna in Waitress. Although her elderly male friend in the restaurant leaves Jenna a huge amount of money, you don’t think Jenna is being saved by him. She’s earned it because she has empowered herself, with the help of her female friends, to free herself from a life and an attitude that keeps her down. If your heroine is on this path, try to work out to what extent she might collude with being a victim and the reasons in the backstory that may have created her as a victim in the first place.

  Supportee

  Being a Supportee doesn’t necessarily mean your heroine is a victim. It means she might have a genuine need for support from others, or she’s chosen circumstances so that others look after her. As independent as a heroine is, there are times she will need emotional, physical, and financial support. One obvious example is after childbirth when women need care and attention. Your heroine might be bad at accepting support because she’s fiercely independent, or she laps it up. She may have been brought up with the expectation that women are looked after by men. Why do some heroines want to be “kept” while others wouldn’t be seen dead doing the washing and cooking? Possibly your dependant heroine has a deep-seated fear of her own strength or has lost confidence in her own abilities. She may be genuinely helpless if she was brought up to be looked after one day. It’s an acceptable cliché in stories to see the aristocratic rich woman humbled by having to live like everyone else. Alternatively, some women dream of being a Supportee because there is too much domestic drudgery in their lives.

  Economic dependency can be a real option for your heroine, psychologically and materially, if her husband’s rich enough. Alternatively, she might come from a culture in which it’s customary for the woman not to work as it’s a sign of weakness of the man. There can be dogma about women and work in countries where it is assumed that mothers should raise children full-time. This doesn’t mean it is normal or natural, or even good for women and children. It can simply be a cultural expectation in a particular culture. Sometimes when circumstances mean that a female Supportee has to take over the provider role, it can bring shame on the family.

  Some heroines remain deskilled, undereducated, and dependent for life on their husband or children. Brick Lane showed a benign dictatorship of a Bangladeshi marriage, with heroine Nazreen having to deal with her unemployed husband’s ego as she slowly starts to work. Going to work and earning an income coincides with the gradual breakdown of her marriage, but who can watch Brick Lane and say it is a bad thing? We are willing Nazreen to have some power over her own life.

  The most glamorous bunch of Supportees in recent times are the ladies of Wisteria Lane, the Desperate Housewives. Okay, some of them do work. But the show takes a satirical peek at a sorority that is predominantly Supportees.

  Tips for Writing the Dependant Role Choice

  Irritation with Your Passive Heroine

  It can be annoying to write your heroine being completely out of touch with herself, for instance, if she’s self-pitying or passive through too much abuse. You can be screaming inside “for Christ sakes, just walk out!” This is good stuff on the whole, because it will ultimately reveal the extent of her arc. So let her drive you nuts!

  Reducing Predictability

  When you watch a film with a heroine who starts off in a very bad place, it’s easy to predict that she’s going to resolve, if not all, most of her problems. It’s like a lonely heroine needing love. We often want happy endings of survival, triumph, and empowerment, but sometimes if you don’t tick all the boxes of resolution it can give your audience a deeper experience and a more memorable story. Your task is to make everything that happens from beginning to end as unpredictable and memorable as possible.

  Man as Savior

  Remember, your heroine will always be more memorable if she plays a big part in saving herself. A loving man or friend will help her do that. He won’t do it for her. Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice is “saved” by Darcy on numerous levels. But she can only reap the reward of true love with her soul mate if she develops humility and an ability to see that she was wrong. Ask yourself if you truly believe women need and want to be saved or looked after by men or is this a legacy of thousands of years of having little or no economic power and being the main carer of children? How are your beliefs unconsciously influencing the outcomes for your female and male characters?

  The Dependant Role Choice in Close-Up

  Precious

  Precious is raped by her father, while her mother watches, not pre
venting him or protecting her daughter. Where does she go in her mind when she’s being violated? A fantasy world, where fairy godmothers reign supreme and where Precious is adored by a gorgeous hunk who will do anything for her. For Victim Precious, the hunk is her knight in shining armor who adores her. Precious’ fantasy is a coping mechanism that might temporarily alleviate pain and humiliation but does nothing to really help her get out of her harrowing situation. Only by saving herself will she be able to protect herself and her children from the clutches of her dysfunctional family.

  THE ROLE CHOICE OF BELIEVER

  Whether they are driven by love, ideology, revolution, or religion, heroines who reflect the role choice of Believer have a cause. Sometimes their convictions serve selfish reasons, but more often than not these are altruistic individuals who want to better the cause of man- and womankind. These are women who have made this role choice because they are ideological beings at heart. They want to improve the world and make it a better place. They can handle necessary sacrifices for their cause, and they aren’t scared of Conflict, obstacles, or difficulty. They can be driven and workaholic, whether they go about life quietly or with a bang. The role choices of Believer are Healer, Amazon, Lover, and Rival.

  Healer

  Your heroine might fulfill the role choice of Believer through her healing capacities, where she tends to the physical and mental ills of another character in order to bring about change and new life. It can be a job she has in the story (doctor, nurse, midwife, drug dealer) or simply a way of being that brings about a positive change in others during the course of the story. Healers tend to be people with a strong conviction to bring about change for the good in others. It is this commitment to change that puts them in this group rather than the Nurturing group, who are more about emotional and physical giving of themselves. Healers understand they have a role, a duty, and they tend to make sacrifices so they can fulfill these roles and duties effectively. They basically believe they can do good and bring about change in a sick person or system.